Comments on the election

[Reality Check]

Early voting in person in Ohio is also interesting.

Ohio voters can early vote in person starting 35 days before the election.

Early voters request the ballot, vote the ballot, and submit the ballot all at the same time, during the same visit to the early voting election site.

This is called "In Person Absentee Voting" in Ohio.

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/upload/p ... sGuide.pdf

[Reality Check]

Virginia is Similar to Ohio. Early voting starts between 30 and 45 days before the election.

Virginia allows early voting in person or by mail as soon as ballots are finalized. This voting may start as much as 45 days before the election, but should not start less then 30 days before the election.

Early voting is allowed both in person and by mail.

Voter may simply show up, request a ballot, vote, and turn in the ballot all at the same time at one of the early voting locations.

Voter must "self certify" that he/she will not be able to vote on election day do to business or personal reasons or for other reasons ( such as serving in the military).

This is referred to in Virginia as various types of absentee voting.

[Reality Check]

Florida has an absentee voting system similar to Ohio and Virgina which allows the earliest voting.

Absentee ballots can be requested online as well as by mail and in person.

Absentee ballots may be voted as early as 35 days before the election.
Election officials must have the ballots available for pickup or mailing at least 28 days before the election.

Absentee ballots may be hand delivered or mailed in after voting.

Florida also has what it calls an in person early voting system, but it only starts 10 days before the election and ends a few days before the election.

The absentee ballots are the most effective for allowing early voting.

Voting can occur up to 35 days early using absentee ballots.

[Reality Check]

Florida has received requests for, and sent out to voters, more than 2 Million Absentee ballots so far.

Reporting on how many have actually been voted and deposited in the ballot box already is delayed.

http://www.theledger.com/article/201210 ... Far-&tc=ar

[OLD1953]

I've been busy.

A lot depends on the election and the state in early voting. I voted early in almost every election when I was home in Tennessee. Now they'll email a ballot to anyone who works for the US overseas, and you fill it out and snail mail it back. Different states, different rules.

The switch to likely voters did a lot of odd things to the electoral map, some of which look pretty strange to me. According to likely voters, Romney will take New Hampshire. Now that looks pretty odd, a state that voted Democrat all the way back through Clinton, that had a 9% gap in the last election in Obama's favor suddenly goes Republican for this election? Anything is possible, but that certainly looks peculiar. What really bothers me about that is states almost never vote in seclusion, a blue state will connect to at least one other blue, a red state will connect to another red, it's really rare for one to just pop up in the middle and start voting the other way. It's happened, but very seldom. Voting normally goes by geographic region, because different regions have different concerns.

At this point it's still Obama ahead in electoral votes, though Romney appears to have closed up on him sharply. How much of that is noise generated from changing polling methods in mid stream I do not know. If the desire of the pollsters was to produce confusion among those paying attention they succeded admirably. We'll have some idea of how accurate this all was in a few weeks. Current numbers say Romney will take NC and Arizona, Florida and Missouri. That still leaves him needing Ohio, Colorado and Virginia to win, assuming that NH goes his way, and assuming that Democrats are much less likely to vote than Republicans, which seems to be the idea pushed by the "likely" voter.

What I honestly expect to see at this point is that we'll get "news" about a close race a while longer, then an excuse will be made (superb performance in last debate or suddenly some detail of Romney's campaign gets close scrutiny, whatever they use) and suddenly it's all back where we started a few weeks ago. I have had problems with this notion of a totally fickle public for a long time and this year will make an interesting test. If the public really is as fickle as the pollsters say it is, then Romney will do much better than I think he will and might actually win this. If the public isn't that fickle, then the pollsters lie to generate revenue for the networks, claiming close races whether or not the race is really close. In about three weeks, we'll have some evidence.

[Reality Check]

Current numbers say Romney will take NC and Arizona, Florida and Missouri.

If Romney takes Virginia and Ohio, both traditional Republican states in a close race, that should give Romney 266 electoral votes.

Then all he has to win is one of the following: Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Nevada or Colorado.

The hard part in that is Ohio. If Romney's Ohio momentum continues long enough, and goes far enough, to overcome Obama's vote early, vote often, drive in from one, or two states away, ground game; then picking up one of those other five (5) states should be the easy part.

Still too early to tell, could break either way in a big way.

[Reality Check]

What I honestly expect to see at this point is that we'll get "news" about a close race a while longer, then an excuse will be made (superb performance in last debate or suddenly some detail of Romney's campaign gets close scrutiny, whatever they use) and suddenly it's all back where we started a few weeks ago. I have had problems with this notion of a totally fickle public for a long time and this year will make an interesting test. If the public really is as fickle as the pollsters say it is, then Romney will do much better than I think he will and might actually win this. If the public isn't that fickle, then the pollsters lie to generate revenue for the networks, claiming close races whether or not the race is really close. In about three weeks, we'll have some evidence.

All sort's of scenarios for the last few weeks that could cause it to break either way.

Most likely is that voters were waiting to see if they had an alternative to four more years of Obama, and,

Romney passed the smell test during the first debate, and nothing in the second debate changed that.

If that is the case, Romney should continue to strengthen in all the battle ground states.

Obama has already been running ads calling Romney a liar and every other nasty name imaginable for months.

Doubling down on that strategy may turn out to hurt Obama more than Romney.

On the other hand Romney is probably going to have to win by more than 3 points with likely voters in the swing states to over come Obama's legal, and not quite so legal, voter turn out operations.

[Reality Check]

Good news for Obama: He succeeded in making it a choice election between Obama and Romney.

Bad news for Obama: After the first debate voters were beginning to perceive the moderate Republican Governor from Massachusetts had a better record than Obama's first four years as President. On education, working in a bi-partisan manner, and balancing the budget Romney looked like a better choice after the first debate. Romney also sold his business experience as superior for job creation, when compared to Obama's disastrous four years as President.

[Trevor]

I still think Romney's got a good chance of winning. The last debate was a minor tactical victory for Obama, but an overall strategic victory for Romney.

Remember, Obama won in the first place because we were feeling very anxious about the economy and the world situation and he promised to fix it all. The way we were then, we were willing to put our hopes in a novice. Now that he hasn't managed to fix much, the enthusiasm can easily turn against him. The public has a short memory.

[OLD1953]

Give it a couple of weeks and we'll know.